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I heard this reported on the BBC the other morning and have been thinking about it off and on. I wonder though, with all the modern technologies of mass communications, if words in use now might last longer than the "old words" because we all hear them over larger geographic areas than ever before?

-------------Some of the oldest words in English have been identified, scientists say.Reading University researchers claim "I", "we", "two" and "three" are among the most ancient, dating back tens of thousands of years..........

The team says it can predict which words are likely to become extinct - citing "squeeze", "guts", "stick" and "bad" as probable first casualties..........

Sound and conceptAcross the Indo-European languages - which include most of the languages spoken from Europe to the Asian subcontinent - the vocal sound made to express a given concept can be similar.New words for a concept can arise in a given language, utilising different sounds, in turn giving a clue to a word's relative age in the language...........

What the researchers found was that the frequency with which a word is used relates to how slowly it changes through time, so that the most common words tend to be the oldest ones.For example, the words "I" and "who" are among the oldest, along with the words "two", "three", and "five". The word "one" is only slightly younger.........

Meanwhile, the fastest-changing words are projected to die out and be replaced by other words much sooner.For example, "dirty" is a rapidly changing word; currently there are 46 different ways of saying it in the Indo-European languages, all words that are unrelated to each other. As a result, it is likely to die out soon in English, along with "stick" and "guts".Verbs also tend to change quite quickly, so "push", "turn", "wipe" and "stab" appear to be heading for the lexicographer's chopping block........

The work casts an interesting light on the connection between concepts and language in the human brain, and provides an insight into the evolution of a dynamic set of words."If you've ever played 'Chinese whispers', what comes out the end is usually gibberish, and more or less when we speak to each other we're playing this massive game of Chinese whispers. Yet our language can somehow retain its fidelity."

It became popular to talk about growing your business. Grow your wealth, grow your portfolio, grow this, grow that has been worn out.

I swear, the other day I heard a weather report where it was said, "Over the next day, we will be growing the cloud cover." If we could successfully seed clouds maybe growing our clouds would make perfect sense, but we can't dependably seed clouds.

Set I’ve seen a photo of that cave drawing, and the consensus is that it’s the F word in the little balloon above the caveman’s head, but I guarantee you that’s not his thumb crushed between the rocks.

Ohio: Top Secret; during the Son Tay Raid......American aircraft DID seed clouds over North Vietnam, in order to attain "proper" met conditions during that action. It's been "on-line" since the late sixties Chief.

Coud seeding is very Iffy and has many variables. Even in Australia where cloud seeding has been going on for a while, it is not dependable. Note the dry spells they are having now and all the fires.

I find this general statement or simular statements are often used to "qualify" seeding results....

"While cloud seeding has shown to be effective in altering cloud structure and size, and converting cloud water to ice particles, it is more controversial whether cloud seeding increases the amount of precipitation at the ground. Cloud seeding may also suppress precipitation."

and...

"Part of the problem is that it is difficult to discern how much precipitation would have occurred had the cloud not been "seeded.""

"Operation Popeye", was one of many code names for " weather modification activities" conducted by DOD and the CIA during the Vietnam War.Information on these activities was held on a special channel, access to which was so limited, that five years after the Raid, the head of one intelligence agency would explain that he wasn't "scared" discussing the subject,he was "just shivering over it".For the suggestion would be made that the prisoners, some Americans were trying to rescue from Son Tay, were moved out of the target area in July of 1970, because of a flood caused by covert American rain-making activities nearby, on the Laotian border.